


Dirges Aren't Poetry

by victoriousscarf



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Funeral, Tightly Introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:19:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was poetic really, fit for the greatest ballads, as Ori well knew with his habit of reading any book that passed under his nose. The three of them falling together, sister sons defending each other and their uncle to the last. Fitting they should all pass out of the world together and touching they did it for each other.</p><p>Except, Ori thought and felt a tremor move through him before he tensed his shoulders to stop it from becoming anything else. Except it felt entirely wrong too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirges Aren't Poetry

It felt right.

And, Ori thought, standing wedged between his two brothers, listening to Dain speaking over the tombs of the line of Durin, it felt entirely wrong.

It was poetic really, fit for the greatest ballads, as Ori well knew with his habit of reading any book that passed under his nose. The three of them falling together, sister sons defending each other and their uncle to the last. Fitting they should all pass out of the world together and touching they did it for each other.

Except, Ori thought and felt a tremor move through him before he tensed his shoulders to stop it from becoming anything else. Except it felt entirely wrong too.

One of them should have been standing there now, King Under the Mountain. Venerable Dain was worthy of the title, and of Durin’s descent, but he was not any of them. He had not lead or fought in the quest across Middle Earth to reclaim the mountain, though in the end none of the dwarves had killed the dragon themselves. But the band that remained, standing together now, did not include Dain.

Dain was old and wise, and a warrior of great renown. But he had not Thorin’s effortless majesty, smoldering passions informing every move, every desire to reclaim his kingdom. He did not have Kili’s constant wit and quick hands, mind as nimble as he was, when he was paying attention to the world around him. With age and training, that mind might have done great things, even though he’d proven himself a reliable warrior, even to the end.

It was so wrong because Ori had once expected to see Fili as King Under the Mountain and now he was simply buried under it.

 Dain wasn’t Fili, he didn’t have the burnished gold hair and easy smile, who wielded two swords as easy as breathing and played a fiddle just as well as that. Ori never looked at Dain and felt the swelling in his chest that he would follow the other dwarf off the side of the world and back up again. He’d never much given thought to the fact that one day Fili might stand as king, but now the possibility was gone it felt like a hole hallowed out in Ori’s chest.

Watching now as Dain laid the Arkenstone on Thorin’s stone effigy, the light illuminating Fili and Kili’s tombs, Ori couldn’t decide if it was worth enough to be poetic, or if the hole in his chest would never allow him to appreciate the story.

When Ori finally found the brothers on the battlefield, where they’d fallen, he hadn’t had the heart to move either of them. Despite the blood, despite the corpses around them, they looked strangely peaceful together, Thorin having already been taken away by desperate healers. Sinking down to his knees, Ori’d waited for someone else to come, to take them away and clean them and prepare them for burial. With a  shaking hand, he’d reached out, lightly touching the far spray of Fili’s hair, matted and darker than it usually was and he didn’t cry.

Now he stood straight and looked between Nori and Dori, who flanked him as if aware he wanted to do nothing more than fall over and not get up again. For a moment Ori wondered what it would be like to lose either of them, or both of them. He couldn’t blame Fili or Kili, as much as he resented that they’d sacrificed themselves for Thorin, only to have him not live at all either. Ori would have done the same for his brother’s in a heartbeat and he felt sure they would have done the same.

He’d just never imagined, when they set out, that he’d watch this happen. He’d never thought about the letter he’d write to Gimli now, telling him what happened. Ori was sure the news had started traveling back already, but he remembered days watching Fili and Kili tease their younger, distant cousin, while Ori wrote in his book. There were not many dwarf children in the Blue Mountains so they all knew each other, growing up at around the same time. Ori remembered many days of sitting and watching Gimli and Fili spar up and down the training field as Kili practiced shooting. Sometimes Gimli and Fili would make it a game, of who could be more distracting. Sometimes they would try to get Ori to give up his sketchbook instead, Ori flailing his hands after them.

Gimli had been put out and angry when they all went on the quest and he didn’t.

Now Ori was just glad of that.

“Are you alright?” Dori asked him softly, now the ceremony was over and the dwarves breaking up, even though Thorin’s company remained standing in a cluster. Nori leaned over, his hand on Ori’s back and he nodded quickly.

Ori’d washed the ribbon his mother had braided into his hair and re-plaited it the night before. “I’m fine,” he said, the quick motions of his head moving the ribbon and the flash of color out of the corner of his eye seemed wrong now.

But he wouldn’t give it up.

His mother had put it there, for his first quest, and one time Fili, gorgeous, golden and brave Fili had unbraided Ori’s hair entirely, weaving the lavender ribbon through his fingers before Ori had kissed him, squarely and yet unsure.

He’d never really figured out why Fili had kissed him back.

But later Fili had rebraided his hair carefully, the ribbon twining through Ori’s hair and Fili had kissed him again before slipping away.

Ori had never gotten to ask Fili how long that’d been building and now he’d never get the chance again. He’d never touch such golden hair, feel warm skin or watch Fili laugh. But more than the memories he had, there were so many possibilities he’d never see, and just as he couldn’t decide if the story was poetic or simply tragic, he couldn’t decide whether he mourned the past he could never touch again, or the future that now would never be.

He managed to walk away from that chamber then, tears unshed, and help. Rebuilding Erebor would take time, and Balin needed a scribe to help him, and everyone needed something.

It wasn’t until later, when he found himself back under the mountain, standing in front of a cold stone effigy that he finally laid his head down, lavender ribbon pressed against the stone and cried. Fingers scrabbling against cold stone he let himself mourn and realized nothing would ever allow him to appreciate whatever poetry had been in the Battle of Five Armies.

He would forever only sing dirges of it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Listening to "I Will Forget You" from the Scarlet Pimpernel Concept Cast CD made this worse.


End file.
